Announcing Student Advantage

Office 365 Education provides students with cloud based productivity tools that help them to communicate and collaborate more efficiently, access assignments in shared workspaces, have their notes synchronized in OneNote and the ability to use familiar applications such as Word, PowerPoint and Excel anywhere, anytime and across virtually any device. With 110 million users worldwide, we’re thrilled Office 365 Education is helping students to get the most out of their education while gaining valuable skills that will help them enter the future workforce.

As part of our ongoing commitment to education, we announced Student Advantage, a new offer which will make it easy for students to use the latest and best version of Office at their education institution and at home.

Beginning December 1, 2013, education institutions worldwide that license Office 365 ProPlus or Office Professional Plus for staff and faculty can provide access to Office 365 ProPlus for students at no additional cost. More than 35,000 institutions are automatically eligible to deliver the Student Advantage benefit to their students.

Nearly 98 percent of students using productivity software currently use Office. Student Advantage enables students to access the familiar experience of Office in an always up-to-date cloud service.

Office proficiency among highest in-demand skills

At Microsoft, we believe technology can play an important role in preparing students for future success and being proficient with Microsoft Office is an important part of that.

New research from IDC shows the nation’s top jobs require well-rounded skillsets. While a number of positions require technical skills, even more require knowledge and cognitive skills gained from use of personal productivity applications and services.

IDC found proficiency with Microsoft Office ranks high at number three of the top 20 in-demand skills highly valued by employers. Specifically, PowerPoint and Word ranked 11th and 13th. Results found Office was the most frequently required software skill, explicitly required in 15 percent of top jobs – 5x that of competitive technologies.

As more and more students begin using Office 365, we’ve been incredibly fortunate to hear some of their stories firsthand. When asked about his experience using Office 365, Auburn University MBA student, Mark Stevenson noted:

Office 365 plays a fundamental role in my college career. Outlook helps me combine personal and school calendars, email, and contacts in one place. Word, PowerPoint, and Excel are essential tools for homework. With a growing emphasis on teamwork in college, SkyDrive helps me share documents with fellow students and collaborate in new ways online with Office Web Apps. But my favorite part of Office 365 is OneNote. I have completely replaced pen and paper with OneNote and my Windows 8 tablet for note taking and project planning in all of my courses. It’s easy and convenient, and my classmates think it’s pretty cool!

If you are interested in realizing the Student Advantage benefit for your students, we recommend these next steps: